What's in your soup?

Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips;

Finger of birth-strangled babe,

Ditch-delivered by a drab;

Make the gruel thick and slab.

 

-- William Shakespeare, Macbeth

The Academy, the destroyer within

 The vice of professors exceeds the destructiveness of the most hostile assaults, as intestine treachery is more ruinous than foreign violence.

-- The Causes of the Decay of Christian Piety

Tut-tut, my pain spells rain

 

 

 

 

 

Aches, and hurts, and cords, do engrieve either towards rain, or towards frost.

-- Francis Bacon

Lent so phony a Jesuit is embarrassed by it

With that in mind, can we talk about our choices for Friday evening meals this Lent? Because over the years I feel like I’ve seen—and been a part of—quite a few Friday Lenten dinners that were every bit as fancy as any non-Lenten meal I have ever eaten. Kingfish ceviche tacos, coconut macadamia-crusted salmon steaks, Lobster Thermidor. Hey, it’s not meat!

I know of nothing in the literature about Lent that says food on Fridays shouldn’t taste good. Nobody wants that. But when our Lenten fasts start to resemble this recipe site’s announcement that “Fish on Good Friday doesn’t have to be a tired tradition. Indulge your guests (or treat yourself) to a fishy dish that’s equal parts impressive and delicious,” I think we might be headed in the wrong direction.

 

Jim McDermott, here.

Man, five foot six, fights off great Russian bear for 18 days and counting

Thus, by degrees, he rose to Jove's imperial seat:

Thus difficulties prove a soul legitimately great.

-- John Dryden

Conservative Methodists have had it with liberal dithering

Last week, when the United Methodist Church postponed — for the third time in as many years — a vote on an orderly plan to split the mainline Protestant denomination long riven by disagreement over the full inclusion of its LGBTQ members, some conservative United Methodists announced they were finally done: They would launch a new denomination in May, orderly plan or no. ... For decades, debate over ordaining and marrying LGBTQ United Methodists has roiled the United Methodist Church, one of the largest Protestant denominations in the United States. 

More.